Network Pitches HuffPost to Launch Wellness Page & They Do!!!

I assure you, we have plenty of ideas which are horrible, but some of them are good, and a few might even be great. Last Fall, as the head of the Cancer Network (Liz) and I were talking over how to spread more LGBT wellness messages we tossed around a bunch of ideas. Our running favorite for the longest time was to start a new blog, one that had less policy (like this one) and more of a focus on wellness things individuals could do. (Because really, this blog spends a lot of time talking public health wonk talk, and we hear there are some people who couldn’t care less about that. <– crazy tho that may seem) We even came up with a name: Rainbow Chard. (Come on, crack at least a small chuckle, ok?)

But why have an ok idea if a great idea is waiting in the wings? All my media friends keep saying, “don’t start a new blog, write for someone else”. So that got me thinking, and long and we thought, what if we could get the largest LGBT media outlet to start a page focused on LGBT wellness? We immediately sent off an email and asked the intrepid Noah Michelson, the editor of Huffington Post’s super popular Gay Voices page if he’d meet with us and within a day we were sitting in the Huffington Post fancy offices (I’m not sure Noah has an office, I think we met under a stairwell) telling him how no one was talking about how the whole wellness revolution was affecting queers, and we had this vision of a new Gay Voices page which could be an anchor for wellness writ large. Social support, getting over barriers to healthcare, exercising more, eating better, staying tobacco free, taking care of our mental health, everything we do to make ourselves healthier every day — Gay Voices could have one page showcasing all of this.

Little did we know we arrived at just the perfect time. Noah told us all about how Arianna Huffington had been talking with a mutual friend, Hilary Rosen, about what else, what else went into a life well lived beyond the usual suspects, money and power. Hilary hit the nail on the head, “So you’re looking for the third metric?” And if you notice, there’s been a whole upsurgence of #thirdmetric focused reporting across the whole Huffington Post website ever since. Well… our idea was a perfect fit with this concept. To our surprise, and happiness, Noah was on board right away. Let’s do this!

Let’s also give a little context. As Noah told us that day, Huffington Post Gay Voices gets 80k people visit it every day to see what’s new. That’s huge, 80k people a day going to the site to find out whassup. That’s not even counting the number of people reading stories which are pushed out.

So after a swath of planning time, we could not be more proud to report that Huffington Post has now launched their new Gay Voices Wellness section. Now their reporters and bloggers can tag stories to go straight to this page, or you can visit it to get all your LGBT wellness inspiration. Liz and I have promised to blog like mad for the page, and we’re trying to get other HuffPost bloggers turned on to post more health stories as well. So make it your goto for health and be sure to send kudos to Huffington Post as well! Check the page out directly here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/lgbt-wellness/.